An Agent-Based Model for Poverty and Discrimination Policy-Making

TL;DR

Global poverty reduction has slowed, and discriminatory treatment of the poor (aporophobia) is posited as an institutional barrier. The authors propose an aporophobia agent-based model (AABM) that adopts a needs-based decision framework to simulate how policies—represented via an Institutional Grammar 2.0/ADICO framework—shape poverty outcomes, starting with Barcelona. The work provides an architecture to quantify discriminatory versus distributive effects of policies and plans to extend analyses to Johannesburg and New York for broader empirical relevance. If successful, this approach offers a non-invasive computational tool to inform poverty reduction strategies that address both wealth distribution and stigma embedded in regulations.

Abstract

The deceleration of global poverty reduction in the last decades suggests that traditional redistribution policies are losing their effectiveness. Alternative ways to work towards the #1 United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (poverty eradication) are required. NGOs have insistingly denounced the criminalization of poverty, and the social science literature suggests that discrimination against the poor (a phenomenon known as aporophobia) could constitute a brake to the fight against poverty. This paper describes a proposal for an agent-based model to examine the impact that aporophobia at the institutional level has on poverty levels. This aporophobia agent-based model (AABM) will first be applied to a case study in the city of Barcelona. The regulatory environment is central to the model, since aporophobia has been identified in the legal framework. The AABM presented in this paper constitutes a cornerstone to obtain empirical evidence, in a non-invasive way, on the causal relationship between aporophobia and poverty levels. The simulations that will be generated based on the AABM have the potential to inform a new generation of poverty reduction policies, which act not only on the redistribution of wealth but also on the discrimination of the poor.

Figures (2)

• Figure 1: Overview of our pipeline.
• Figure 2: Architecture of the AABM, aporophobia agent based model, based on the needs model of Dignum et al.